The Problem
This castle illustration sums up the problem in our
Western cultures from a Christian perspective. The left castle
has a foundation of evolution (and/or millions of years)—a
foundation that really teaches that man by himself determines
truth. Out of this foundation comes a castle called 'humanism'
and the consequences that can arise from such a foundation, e.g.,
abortion, homosexual behavior, etc. Again, evolution or millions
of years is not the cause of these social ills, but provides a
foundation for people to justify these behaviors if they really
want to.
On the right we see the castle of Christianity, built on the
foundation of the absolute authority of the Word of God. Out of
this structure comes a Christian worldview (Christian
morality/right and wrong, marriage, sanctity of life,
etc.).
The humanists are very clever-they know that to effectively
attack Christianity, they shouldn't aim directly at the doctrines
of the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth. This would be too
obvious. Besides, this is just attacking the structure. To
destroy Christianity, you have to try to destroy the foundation
of God's Word.
The best way to accomplish this is to attack the history that is
foundational to all Christian doctrine. Because the history in
Genesis 1–11 is foundational to every single Christian
doctrine, the humanists have decided to aim their guns at this
foundation.
Through the teaching of millions of years, evolution, and so on,
humanists have been able to convince many that the Bible's
history can't be trusted—that the Bible is not credible,
and therefore is not the absolute authority. The more this kind
of thinking permeates a culture, the more people's actions will
begin to become consistent with the humanist foundation that man
determines truth. Thus ultimately the Christian structure will
begin to collapse and the humanist structure will become
entrenched in its place.
Sadly, many Christians are helping to destroy their own
foundation by accepting millions of years and/or evolutionary
ideas that undermine the history in Genesis 1–11 and
therefore undermine the absolute authority of God's Word. By
teaching that you can accept millions of years, these Christians
have 'unlocked the door' that tells people that they can
reinterpret the Word of God on the basis of outside ideas. This
will eventually lead to a destruction of Biblical
authority.
At the same time, these Christians are recognizing that there is
something dreadfully wrong. They are trying to fight the
humanists and attempting to deal with the increasing problem of
the social ills in the culture such as abortion, homosexual
behavior, pornography, lawlessness and so on. But what most
Christians don't seem to understand is that these social ills are
not the problems in the culture, but are in fact the symptoms of
the problem: a change in foundation from the authoritative Word
of God to man's opinions determining truth.
This change occurring in society has resulted in a culture shift
from a Christian worldview to a secular one. It is important to
understand that this change has been a foundational one-the
change has been from the bottom up, not from the top down. Thus,
if you want to be successful in turning the culture around to
return to a Christian worldview, it has to be a change from the
ground up, not the top down. In other words, even though
Christians need to take a stand against the evils of abortion,
homosexual behavior and so on (and they need to make this known
in the culture), if they don't deal with the foundational reason
why these issues are such problems in the culture, they will
ultimately fail in their battle against the onslaughts of
evolutionary humanism.
Note that when the foundation from God's Word was the one that
was primarily accepted in the culture and you preached about sin,
Jesus, and trusting in the Lord God of the Bible, most people
would understand the message. But now that the culture has had a
major shift to a different foundation—where man by himself
determines truth, and life is only a result of natural processes
over millions of years. As a result, people who have built their
thinking on this foundation no longer understand the message of
sin and repentance and God's law, etc. To reach these people, you
would have to get them to change their thinking foundationally.
In other words, they need to destroy the wrong foundation on
which they have built their thinking, and establish the right
foundation from God's Word, beginning in Genesis as real history.
These people need to be shown the fallacies of the evolutionary
theory of origins; they need to be shown that scientists have not
proven that the Earth is billions of years old, etc. Instead,
people need to be shown that the Bible's history-beginning in
Genesis-is credible and that it does fit with real science and
connects to the real world in every area.
This illustration helps to awaken Christians to recognize the
real nature of the battle: it is a foundational one.
We are very grateful to ANSWERS IN GENESIS.ORG for
making this article and illustration available to us.
UK APOLOGETICS